Scanner recommendations (and usb ports)

[Alan Jackson]

Well I'm in the market for a new scanner, so I'm seeking suggestions.

This is for home use, mostly for photos & such. I'd like 600 dpi, don't
expect to need better than that. And of course it needs to run under Sane.
Might want to do slides as well.

I just hooked up an old HP 3400C we had gotten, and it has one row with a
bad sensor. 
That in itself was an experience. My son had been running it on his Mandrake
system, and when I moved it to my Gentoo system, it wouldn't work. I dug around
a bit and found out that it wasn't supported. But how could it work for him?
Finally I found a sourceforge project devoted to the HP scanners that had a
patch for sane, which I applied, and now everything works. Mandrake must have
applied that patch themselves.

I'd be completely happy, if it didn't have that one bad row... sigh.

While I'm asking about stuff, has anyone used those usb port expanders or
whatever they are called? I've run out of usb ports...

-- 
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| Alan K. Jackson            | To see a World in a Grain of Sand      |
| alan at ajackson.org          | And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,         |
| www.ajackson.org           | Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand |
| Houston, Texas             | And Eternity in an hour. - Blake       |
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